1972 playscript (abridged)/Act I
Act I *Excluding intro on p. 1, expounds on p. 1 with 43 minutes of extended footage. ;A MAN'S VOICE V.O. I'm not a poet. I've never moved anyone with my words. (beat) Maybe that's why they chose me. ;INT. SPACE CAPSULE Close on Kelvin. We hold on him a long time, as a myriad of readouts scroll and flash across his face. A slit of sunlight glides slowly through frame. ;DISSOLVE TO: See the approaching planet: SOLARIS. Kelvin stares at it, hypnotized. It has a translucent quality, as though it is lit from within, and its undulating, ocean-like surface slowly changes colors. Kelvin's attention is diverted as an orbiting ship, the PROMETHEUS, edges into frame. ;KELVIN: Prometheus, this is Athena 7, on approach, do you read me? (beat) Prometheus, this is Athena 7, on approach, do you read me? No response. He exhales and types on a keyboard. ;EXT. SPACE The Athena 7, sporting a DBA logo, advances toward the Prometheus. ;CUT TO: INT. PROMETHEUS Kelvin, in a space suit, climbs with some difficulty out of the Athena 7, which has come to rest in the DOCKING BAY of the Prometheus. Several exploratory PODS fill the remainder of the area. Kelvin gets his bearings and looks around, but sees no sign of life. ;CUT TO: INT. CORRIDOR Empty. (NOTE: Except for some ROBOTIC, NON-SPEAKING CHARACTERS: the AUTOMATED TASKMASTERS. These are small, bug-like repair units that constantly roam the ship, fixing things. Their tiny hum is virtually silent, and we see them all the time on the Prometheus. They can adhere to any surface at any angle.) Kelvin, now out of his space suit and holding a small carrying case and a duffle bag, moves on. CUT TO: INT. GIBARIAN'S ROOM Ransacked. Kelvin registers it, then moves to the corner of the room where the computer terminal rests. Within moments he has discovered Gibarian has recorded a video message for him to replay. ;VIDEO: Gibarian addressing the camera. He appears to be lucid, but extremely fatigued. GIBARIAN: Hi, Chris. (a light smile) I'm so glad you came. (beat, the smile fades) I still have a little time, and I want to tell you something. To warn you. By now you know about me, or if you don't, get Snow or Sartorius to tell you; it doesn't matter. (beat) I didn't lose my mind. You should be able to tell from this video. I'm not mad. (beat) If it happens to you, remember that it isn't madness. (beat) You should know, I'm in favor of destroying Solaris. I know that's... illegal. And unethical. And irresponsible. But it's the only way to make it stop. A long moment of silence is broken by a noise on the video, which draws Gibarian's attention offscreen. GIBARIAN: (addressing whoever made the noise) Cut that out. Do you hear me? Gibarian switches off the video. The computer screen freezes the last recorded frame and overlays a readout indicating the file has ended. ;CUT TO: INT. CORRIDOR Empty. But there is a door at the end of it, slightly open. Kelvin moves toward it. INT. ROOM A FIGURE, seated with its back to the door, turns to see Kelvin enter. This is SNOW. He looks Kelvin up and down, his expression wary and alert. KELVIN: Snow. Didn't you hear my radio? I'm Kelvin. A long beat. Snow just watches him. SNOW: Yes. We heard. Kelvin takes a step forward, and Snow recoils. KELVIN: What's wrong? What happened to Gibarian? SNOW: He's dead. KELVIN: How? A beat. SNOW: Suicide. * Excluding “chocolate dialogue” on pg. 4. A long beat as Kelvin stares at Snow. KELVIN: What happened here? A beat. (leaving) SNOW: Kelvin, if you see anything unusual... Kelvin stops, but doesn't turn around. SNOW: ... try to stay calm. ;CUT TO: INT. CORRIDOR Kelvin stands outside a door. A beat. SARTORIUS: (inside, muffled) Sartorius cracks the door open and slithers through the slit and into the hallway. He is of obvious intelligence and not to be messed with; contentious, intimidating when he wants to be, and probably brilliant. Kelvin eyes him suspiciously. KELVIN: What happened to Gibarian? SARTORIUS: Didn't you talk to Snow? KELVIN: I want to hear your version. SARTORIUS: (incredulous) * Excluding “incredulous dialogue” on pg. 5 They have no idea what's going on up here. KELVIN: I am here to recover this mission, report my findings, and make a recommendation. Now: What happened to him? SARTORIUS: The same thing that could happen to any of us. KELVIN: Where's his body? SARTORIUS: In the lab. * Excluding intro on p. 6 Sartorius rotates and zips back into his room. As the door closes Kelvin sees a flash of ANOTHER FIGURE in Sartorius' room. The glimpse was too quick to judge who or what the other figure could have been. ;CUT TO: INT. CORRIDOR - DAY Kelvin walks, exploring the ship. He sees something that stops him: A NUDE WOMAN: Early 20s, slipping across a corridor up ahead. Kelvin gives chase. He sees her turn a corner, but by the time he gets there, she is gone. CUT TO: ;INT. SNOW'S ROOM KELVIN: Is there anybody else here? SNOW: (sits up a little) Why, who did you see? KELVIN: Gibarian warned me. He left me a message. SNOW: Who was it? KELVIN: She was real. Where did she come from? Snow looks at him but doesn't respond. KELVIN: Tell me. I won't think you're insane. SNOW: Oh, that's a relief... A beat. SNOW: How long can you go without sleep? KELVIN: That depends. SNOW: Well, when you do go to sleep: barricade your door. ;CUT TO: EXT. SPACE Solaris. Quiet, but still active somehow. Kelvin speaks into a video communication device. KELVIN (V.O.) The Prometheus, as far as I can tell, is functionally intact. Crew status: One dead, Gibarian. Cause of death appears to be suicide. * Excluding last half of p. 7, not in film ;CUT TO: INT. KELVIN'S ROOM Later. Kelvin is lying down. The lights are out, and he is trying to sleep. After a moment, he gets up, checks the lock on his door, and lies back down. Then he gets up and moves a chair in front of the door, and... puts two heavy cases on top of the chair, and lies back down. Laughing to himself, he drifts off to sleep. Silence. ANOTHER ANGLE: On Kelvin, asleep. RHEYA: Stands and makes her way to Kelvin. Without hesitation she kisses him and they begin to explore each other. A beat. EXTREME CLOSE-UP: A WOMAN'S LIPS, slightly parted. Continued silence, AND: A WIDER VIEW: RHEYA, 30s, staring at us, practically daring us to look away. Her obvious intelligence and confidence make her extremely compelling, along with the fact that it was her parted lips we were looking at a moment ago. Her expression indicates she's in a very raw emotional state. * Excluding “train scene” intro on pg. 9, not in film Rheya is sitting in Kelvin's room on the Prometheus, right now. She is staring at Kelvin and she is ethereal in her stillness. KELVIN: Awakens, blinks, and slowly recognizes her. If he is not entirely surprised it is because he has obviously dreamed of Rheya before. He looks at her, simply. He looks at her. * Excluding the “obvious scene” on pg. 9 KELVIN: Where did you come from? She moves to him. KELVIN: How are you here? She stops. RHEYA: How do you mean? (beat) Chris, what's wrong? Hearing his name spoken by her (and those particular words, perhaps) nearly causes Kelvin to scream. He stands and moves to the chair. Rheya watches him. RHEYA: I love you. He looks up at her for as long as he can. Then he looks down. KELVIN: I need to see Snow. RHEYA: I'll go with you. KELVIN: (rising) I'll just be a minute. She bolts out of bed. RHEYA: Don't. KELVIN: Why? RHEYA: I don't know. I can't be alone. KELVIN: I'll be right back. She is trying to accommodate him but her fear of being left alone is palpable, even excessive. He sees this and puts his arms on her shoulders to comfort her. KELVIN: All right. All right. Here. He hands her a few pills and retrieves a glass of water. RHEYA: What are they? KELVIN: To calm your anxiety. RHEYA: To calm my anxiety. She takes the pills and smiles. ;CUT TO: INT. DOCKING BAY Kelvin leads Rheya to one of the exploratory pods. They are in space suits. RHEYA: We're taking a flight? KELVIN: Yes. He opens the door of a pod and indicates for her to enter. She is unsure. KELVIN: Go ahead. I'll close the door behind me. She stares up and into the pod. Kelvin watches her go with difficulty and then CLOSES THE DOOR behind Rheya. He walks across the docking bay to the control room and begins preparations for the pod to be jettisoned. KELVIN: In agony as he watches a real-time, beat-by-beat brand of technological murder take place: Rheya's pod is pushed off into space. RHEYA: Her face contorted in confusion, watches through the pod window as the docking bay doors close in front of her with a brutal finality. KELVIN: collapses to the ground, shattered. ;CUT TO: INT. KELVIN'S ROOM Kelvin washing his face. SNOW: Personally, I think it's God. At least, it fits my definition. KELVIN: And professionally? SNOW: I'm not sure. (beat) It started with Gibarian. He locked himself in his room and refused to talk except through a crack in the door. He covered the video lens. Obviously we thought he was having a nervous breakdown. I don't know why he didn't tell us he had somebody in there. By this time, we were getting visitors, too. He was desperately trying to figure it out. Day and night. (beat) Who was she? KELVIN: My wife. SNOW: Dead? Kelvin nods. SNOW: She has materialized from your memory of her. What was her name? KELVIN: Rheya. SNOW: It started about three months ago. Right after the government sold the expedition. We were ready to go home. KELVIN: Will she come back? SNOW: Probably. KELVIN: I wish you'd told me. SNOW: Told you what? A beat. An enormous amount of money changed hands to get control of this project. We are in little danger of being left alone for long. (beat) You'll need to do something. Otherwise they'll be sending someone out to recover you. KELVIN: Gibarian said he thinks Solaris should be destroyed. SNOW: That's ludicrous. This is contact. We have found God. The only issue is figuring out how to prove this in a way that will make sense back on Earth. So how will we describe it, if we choose to describe it at all? Excluded scene ;CUT TO: INT. CONFERENCE ROOM Before Kelvin's arrival. Gibarian is talking to Snow and Sartorius. GIBARIAN: A pre-biological colloidal envelope, possibly exceeding terrestrial structures in complexity; a plasmic mechanism. Probably without life as we conceive it, but capable of performing functional activities on an astronomic scale. My view is that Solaris has reached, in a single bound, the "homeostatic ocean" stage without passing through stages of terrestrial evolution. I think it bypassed cellular development altogether. It hasn't taken endless eons to adapt itself to its environment, but in fact dominated its environment immediately. From the moment it existed, it was the most superior element in the Universe. And now it passes the time doing extravagant theoretical thinking about the Universe, with us as the cast. ;CUT TO: We now show this scene being played out on a video monitor, watched by Kelvin. GIBARIAN: It's engaged in a never-ending process of transformation; an ontological autometamorphosis, begging the question: Can thought exist separately from consciousness? SNOW: It's God. SARTORIUS: I don't care what it is, we need to figure out how to make it stop. What if this thing follows us back to Earth? What if what's happening here started happening on Earth, on a mass scale? Don't you see that as a problem? I think it's a serious mistake to assume it's benign. For all we know it's driving us crazy so it can watch us kill each other. SNOW: We're not even sure it will let us leave. Back to film content CUT TO: INT. LAB Kelvin stares at Gibarian's body, which is lying under a sheet in the ship's operating room. Also under the sheet, next to Gibarian: The Young Girl. CUT TO: EXT. SPACE A shot hovering over the surface of Solaris. Not in film * Excluding remaining p. 15 * Excluding p. 16 * Excluding first half of p. 17 Act II CUT TO: 1972 playscript (abridged)/Act II Category:Script 1972